Association of Antagonists Anonymous
by Synthesis
Summary: He's a bit of a jerk, but don't call him Ivan, and don't remind him that his purpose in life, as the final boss in the air combat arcade shooter 'Smolensk Strike', is to get downed by a airborne killing machine piloted by a unsuspecting quarter-jockey. A Bad-Anon meeting where an end-game boss finally gets something off his chest.
1. The Association of Antagonists Anonymous

**The Association of Antagonists Anonymous **

It was Tuesday, and the first Bad-Anon meeting I decided to actually speak during. Usually I just sit at my folding chair, keep to myself, sometimes wear my helmet visor-down if I want to catch up on some shut-eye. Otherwise, I always have two cups of coffee, one in each hand, without fail.

I swallowed. "My vision…is definitely…getting worse."

That's what I told them, the other regulars at Bad-Anon. They asked for a problem, and I gave them one. Clyde, the ghost who runs the meetings, gave me that knowing look with his two giant eyes.

I elaborated reluctantly. "Well, I mean it is," moving my hand back and forth in front of my face. "It's definitely getting worse. Which is a problem my…line of work."

Clyde took a sympathetic note. "Well, _I_ think that's true, but you know, that's not usually how we do this. You've been coming for…about fifteen years now?"

There's no getting things past Clyde, is there? "Fine, fine. Sorry about that. Should I…?"

"Go ahead."

A nervous, forced cough. "Do I have to stand up?"

"Only if you want to."

Oh, Clyde. Compassionate, understanding Clyde. I stood up, still holding a Styrofoam cup in either hand. "I'm Red Air Force Commander, from _Smolensk Strike_, the big game between the _King of Fighters _machines and _Time Crisis_." I sat down. "Oh, and I'm a bad guy."

"_Hi Ivan_," the others in attendance said in chorus.

I gave Clyde a frown. "Not…actually my name."

"It's on your game," the blue woman in the red dress next to me pointed out, pointing her staff at me.

I enjoy a good argument, it's a weakness of mine. "Right, uh…Kari, isn't it? From _Shining Wisdom_? Hi, Kari, nice to _meet_ you," I told her very quickly. "If you'd looked closely, you'd see 'Ivan' is in quotation marks. It's…not my name."

"That's exactly what it is."

"No, it's not," I insisted before Clyde cut me off. Uncharacteristically rude of him.

"Commander Ivan, how about we make good use of our time here? Why don't you talk about what's really bothering you"

It's all in the manual, Ivan _isn't _my name. But it's hard to argue with Clyde, what with his supreme reasonableness and lack of arms and legs. "So, in level eight, over Smolensk North Aerodrome, not that the player gives a crap where it is because the game flies them there, I'm the last 'ace' encounter in the blue 'Flanker' that gets shot down. And I've been getting shot down since…about 1996. Which, I don't mind, by itself."

I gestured at my back with one of the cups. "I get to bail out and, after fifteen years of packing my parachute every day, I get used to it. Better than crashing in a…fiery inferno, right?"

The other people in attendance voice their agreement. Shermie, three chairs down with the hair that hides her eyes, gave an affirming shrug, apparently. Clyde beckoned me to continue.

"Except now, I must have...like...two dozen bicycles all over the forest under level eight. Because I need to get back to base, don't I, and I don't _respawn _unless I die," I muttered darkly.

I didn't know it at the time, but Shermie did me a favor by asking a question that changed focus from that. "Why don't just...drive back?"

"I _used _to have a soldier who'd drive me back, actually. Except nowadays, the players shoot every single one of the jeeps before they even bother with me. Completionist's bonus, you know? And that's the problem, it's definitely getting harder. For me, I mean. It's easier for the player. When I started this, I could actually dish out a decent number of G.O.s. Nowadays, three minutes in and I'm already on fire. And it's one thing when they can wipe out wave after wave of 'Fulcrums', and I can live with that because, well, I wasn't the one getting shot down at first. But now…" I stopped.

It was tough. "…I think it's my vision. I'm getting nearsighted. Or farsighted. Whichever one makes it harder to fly." Then I finished one of my coffees.

Clyde 'nodded', or floated a nod, or whatever it was he did. "Thanks, Ivan. It's really good to hear you share, after fifteen years of coming but…never saying anything." Some soft clapping followed.

A mustachioed man with a brown-and-red uniform and beret with an eye patch stood up. "I think I understand where Ivan's coming from," he explained. "I'm Donald Morden, and I'm a bad guy."

"_Hi Donald Morden_."

"Like you, Ivan, I first came in more than a few years ago, back when this place was still called 'Antagonists Anonymous'. And name change aside, I've found sharing here was a great way to overcome the difficult of _being _an antagonist, even if you've been written with a really tragic backstory."

I shrugged. "I don't…really have a backstory, but…thanks."

"I mean it. From one jackbooted bad guy to another, if you keep it bottled in, I tell you, you can't keep doing this. Not well, anyway, and if you've got a job, you might as _well_ do it _well_, am I right?"

There was some murmured agreement, though I kept frowning. "I don't wear jackboots."

"What do you call those?" Kari asked, gesturing at my feet.

I straightened my legs and looked at my feet. "Those are _sapogi_. There's a difference." I scowled at her. "And look at what you're wearing!"

"Easy, Ivan, this is supposed to be a safe place," Clyde interrupted me while I grumbled. "Remember what we say here: one game at a time."

I held my head in my free hand and repeated the line as reverently as I could. "You're right, you have to live…one game at a time." It was hard to argue with that.

"Good. Now let's close out with the affirmation." Everyone stood up, myself included, and held hands in the circle. I held one of Kari's bandaged blue hands and Bob-omb, who doesn't really have hands so much as plasticized white nubs. He also has to stand on his chair because of his height; you have to sympathize with the poor guy's lot in life. Kari, on the other hand, I don't sympathize with: you have to figure being a sexy, magical shape-shifting elf-witch is a lot easier than a combustible, living explosive with no fingers. Poor Bob-omb can't even drink the coffee.

"_I'm bad, and that's good.  
I will never good, and that's not bad.  
There's no one I'd rather be than me._"

Clyde gave one of his approval-filled nods. "Good work here, everyone. I'll see all of you at the same time next week. Donald, Shermie, could you help me with the chairs?"

"Sure Clyde."

I was relieved he didn't ask me, though I did have to put up with an 'comforting' shoulder pat from Wario as he passed by. "Good sharing there, Ivan, some real growth."

Again, my name isn't Ivan. I didn't say anything, just turning to Bob-omb. "Wanna' head out, Bob?"

"Sure, Red. Got a dinner date with Juli, hate that miss that." Bob's got this metallic, tinny voice, probably the result of not having a mouth. He's got feet, sure, but he's clockwork slow and takes forever to go anywhere. No shame in asking for help when you've got metal feet.

I picked him up gingerly and held him in my gloves. "Juli...you mean one of the Shadaloo girls?"

"You know it."

"Well done," I complimented him while watching Kari leave. Somehow, Bob's got a way with the ladies that I can't figure out. "Come on, let's bail this maze before I go blind," I told him while following Kari's blue behind out of the dark halls of the _Pac-Man _machine.

* * *

_**Author's**_** Notes:**

Donald Morden, of _Metal Slug_, and Shermie, of _King of Fighters_, are both property of the SNK Playmore Corporation. Kari (or Karry) of _Shining Wisdom _is property of the Sega Corporation. Juli of _Street Fighter Alpha 3_ is property of Capcom Company, Ltd. and _Pac-Man _is property of Bandai-Namco Games Inc., and Midway Games (owned by NetherRealm Studios). Bob-omb and Wario belong to Nintendo Company, Ltd. The 'Flanker' (NATO reporting name for the Su-27 line of air superiority aircraft) and 'Fulcrum' (NATO reporting name for the MiG-29 line of multirole fighter aircraft) are property of the Sukhoi Company and the Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG respectively.

And, of course, _Wreck-it Ralph _was produced and released by Walt Disney Studios.

_Smolensk Strike _isn't actually a game, though Smolensk North Aerodrome was a military and civil air field.


	2. The Illusion Bar

**The Illusion Bar**

Being candid with you, I wasn't being entirely honest at Bad-Anon. You see, I _do _have a backstory. Now, it's nowhere near as tragic as what SNK's writers penned for Morden. See, besides being the Canadian Saddam Hussein, Donald Morden's only the bad guy in _Metal Slug _because being an upstanding admiral, and a father to his men, didn't keep his _real_ son from being killed in the 'Central Park Bombing', the result of an intelligence failure on the part of his bosses. So Good Guy Morden snaps and leads a military coup against the old world order, which the player needs to put down with guns and gun-wielding vehicles.

I should elaborate that, presently, Morden's son exists only in his mind. He never appears in any _Metal Slug _game. And Donald's been around long enough to know that those heartstring-tugging framed photographs in his war room are the only physical evidence of him. He's come to terms with that.

Me, I don't have a tragedy to come to terms _with_. Which is a good thing, right?

"But Ivan _is _your name."

This statement was posed by King, the masculine but beautiful owner of the Illusion Bar in South Town. To get it out of the way: there's nothing wrong with Tapper's Bar. It's the Sardi's of the video gaming world, though that has more to do with pedigree and seniority than service. The Illusion Bar, on the other hand, is the Roxbury of the video gaming world. Its décor is on a whole different level, it's offerings beyond compare (for starters, unlike Tapper's, it has more than one), and it doesn't need to build itself on deep-held nostalgia of the video gaming greats.

Also, thanks to its mononym-ed, blond Muay Thai-practicing owner, it's the favorite hangout of the gorgeous bruisers from its game, _The King of Fighters_. Unlike their homelier, and less numerous, Capcom counterparts, SNK's female fighters prefer the intimacy and familiarity of one of their own.

Now, pilots characters fall into one of three categories: they're nonbeings (like those poor adversary pilots from the _Rogue Squadron _machine), they're drunks (like the guys in _Jet Rocket_), or they're skirt chasers (like the boys from the _Top Gun _machine).

So which of those three do I fall in?

I hold the crystal glass in a leather gloved hand, while King leans it at me.

"No, it's not. It's my codename," I explain. "Every level in _Smolensk Strike _has a named objective to shoot down amid all that cannon fodder. In level one, it's the nuclear power station. In level _seven_, it's the space shuttle, _Buran_."

I put down my glass. "Which, by the way, seems like a giant middle finger to the cause of space exploration, but whatever. And in level eight, it's the top ace of the Smolensk Theater, codename: Ivan." I hunched my shoulders over. "It is _literally _a codename."

"What's wrong with Ivan?" King had seen through my semantic arguments to the heart of the matter.

"I don't like it, it's terribly predictable, which doesn't seem like an attractive quality in an ace pilot."

"Isn't 'Ivan' just a form of 'John'?"

I stood up to greet the speaker, the legendary Shiranui Mai, the series' woman fighter _par excellence_. Literally. In our machines, she's the leader of so-called 'Women Fighter's Team'. Even a spoilsport like myself pays respect to the _kunoichi _in red.

"If it isn't the Queen of Fighters," I told her, offering her my seat. She gives a haughty laugh—at odds with the sexy, fun-loving pyrokinetic she plays as, as with the rest of us, Ms. Shiranui is different 'in real life'—and takes the adjacent seat, paper fan hiding her mouth.

Out of respect, I remain standing: I might be a _podpolkovnik_, a lieutenant colonel, in a fake air force, but Ms. Shiranui is a beloved idol and one of the most recognizable women in gaming. In South America, she's bigger than Chun-Li. And, more importantly, she's not some pilot who's reduced to a being an angry man in an ill-fitting flight suit outside of his own game; her martial arts work anywhere.

So, is it my inescapable programming as an officer and a gentleman that commands me to demonstrate respect? Is it because I've spent enough down time on the dangerous streets of South Town, watching the fighting greats duke it out, to be in awe of her? Or is it because Ms. Shiranui bounces around in a sleeveless red tunic packed with knives?

"You really need to learn not to sweat the small stuff, Johnny."

"Yes, ma'am," I mutter dutifully, rolling my eyes before turning to King. "Thanks, King, put it on my tab, will you?"

King barks a sympathetic laugh to that joke, which I've told countless times before. "Have a good night."

"Oh, Johnny, I need a favor," Mai asks, spinning on her stool and crossing her long legs.

At first, I'm irritated enough by being called 'Johnny' that I don't even process what she says. "Huh?"

She leaped from her seat. "It's nothing, really! A friend of mine wants flying lessons on something bigger than a biplane. Who better than you?"

"Maverick and Iceman?"

"God, not those losers," she said, scowling. "Trust me, he's a great kid, and you'd be doing me a favor. Plus, I already sent him to the Aerodrome"

_He's _a great kid. "I don't know, Ms. Shiranui…"

"Come on!" By now, she's back in my face, and pressing her chest between her arms and making those big soft eyes. This is totally unnecessary, because what am I going to do? Maybe I'm not that nice a guy, but I'm not unreasonable. Bob's on his date with Juli. I have a 'night' of darts, laundry, and bicycle maintenance ahead of me before another quarter jockey arrives and the war starts again.

"What's his name?"

"Miles Prower. He's a great kid, a real prodigy, and at his maximum level of cuteness," she cooed at me.

"Great, lucky me."

"Thanks Johnny!" she says, bouncing off gracefully. I don't bother correcting her. I give King a nod, who returns a knowing, sympathetic smile, something I get a lot of, as I leave. I'd have left immediately if I didn't run into another familiar face on the way out.

"Mary Ryan, as I live and breathe. I was wondering where you'd been."

Blue Mary, another SNK superstar, sticks out her muscular hand and I shake it, getting my hand ground down in a friendly manner in the process. "Hey Red, it's been a while. You already heading out?"

"Yes, the Queen of Fighters over there has me doing a favor, flying lessons."

"How's Bob?"

"On a date, actually. Shadaloo girl."

"Wow, he's never out for long, is he?"

"No, he's not. You should stop by the Aerodrome some time, I'm sure the boys'll appreciate seeing a friendly face. Alleviate a little of the doom and gloom."

"I'll do that. Take it easy, Red."

"You too, Blue Mary," I tell her as I leave through the front door, and Mary waves a greeting to her fellow fighter. In the distance, I can hear a dog barking, followed by someone throwing someone across the street in a purely platonic manner.

South Town's not _really _a city so much as a Mafioso-ridden urban fighting arena—in that sense, it's like Miami, but with more athleticism. A thousand fighting rivalries, the accumulation of almost twenty years of tournaments, being waged simultaneously. All the same, it's a good break from the deafening silence of the woods beyond Smolensk North before the traffic descends. There, there's only two teams: the Red Army, and our plethora of aircraft, supply vehicles, and nuclear power station. Trains, planes, automobiles. And then there's the White Army, as we call them, with their small collection of tanks to be escorted for points, their handful of friendly aircraft and, most importantly, the player fighter. As in South Town, we fight the same battle every day, but unlikely South Town, we really only fight one: Reds versus Whites, like some kind of demented basketball game in Valhalla. It's no secret that I long since stopped caring—it's been years since the notion of defending the Motherland, being invaded for some inexplicable reason—conjured up some feelings with the certainty that, if we fall, _when _we fall, the points are tallied, a message read, and then everything: the destroyed aircraft, the cratered power station, the slain troops, are returned as if nothing ever happened.

I know why it bothers me, it's as plain as day. The question is _when_ did it start to bother me? It was always this way, war without consequences, like the song I sing to myself on my way to the terminal exit out of _The King of Fighters_. It sticks in my mind because of just how appropriate it feels to the situation at hand.

"_Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane,  
Jane plays with Willi, Willi is happy again.  
Suki plays with Leo, Sacha plays with Britt,  
Adolf builds a bonfire, Enrico plays with it.  
If looks could kill, they probably will,  
In games without frontiers, war without tears._"

* * *

_**Author's Notes:**_

Mai Shiranui, Blue Mary, and South Town are all owned by the SNK Playmore Corporation. Chun-li is property of Capcom Company, Ltd., and _Star Wars: Rouge Squadron _is properly jointly of LucasArts and Factor 5. The _Buran _spacecraft was developed by RKK Energia in the Soviet Union. Miles "Tails" Prowler of _Sonic the Hedgehog _was created and owned by the Sega Corporation. _Root Bear Tapper _was published by what would become Midway Games. Finally, the 1980 single "Games without Frontiers" was written by Peter Gabriel. _  
_


	3. Smolensk North, Pt I

**Smolensk North, Part I**

If you'll allow me to humblebrag for a moment, Smolensk North Military Aerodrome is the best of its kind in the arcade, and one of the best in gaming.

Yes, that's right. And I'll explain why. We weren't always _Smolensk Strike_. Arcade games don't get made with that level of attention to detail, because why would you? All of our original assets instead come from a survey simulator developed by a small third-floor gaming studio on the Moskva River, made up of a special breed of nerd: aviation geeks, many of whom would have been in the real, not-video-game air force if it weren't for the Lost Decade caused by some not-video-game political leader by the name of Boris Yeltsin. The internet aside, I can't really understand who this Boris Yeltsin person is because, first off, he is dead, and second, even if he wasn't I could never meet him because of the nature of my existence, but apparently, his time as supreme leader wasn't the best, and it cost a lot of people their dreams and livelihood, including these young men.

A lot of people lashed out—we have incomplete assets of certain cities, with certain tanks, shooting at certain parliament buildings. None of those assets got finished, and if you didn't have access to the source code like I do, you'd never know they existed.

What did get finished was the original storyline, set in 1990. It's based, distantly, on the movie _Dr. Strangelove_, which I have not seen personally, but am programmed to think I did. Some careless madman in uniform decides he's had enough of the status quo and uses guns and gas to take control of an airbase full of nuclear weapons. He sends those planes against the Motherland, and one gets through. It turns the early-warning radar array at Medny Island, far, far away, into a glowing hole in the ground. That, by itself, doesn't mean much. It's just a reason to have a big war, like the ones in history. In this story, we were the heroes, fighting for air superiority over Belarus, to drive the invaders back out of our Motherland once again (apparently, a western invasion has happened a few times before), and force an uneasy peace.

Apparently, this story isn't what our publisher, Namco, had in mind. The game couldn't recoup the cost of development, so the Japanese developer asked to buy all the assets to be turned into a fun if ahistorical arcade adventure. We became the villains, and the antagonists, the heroes. And so began _Smolensk Strike_.

But all that loving craftsmanship survives. I guess the developers couldn't bear to part with it, even if the players would never see it, much less appreciate it. Games are like this: you make more than you need, because you have to, and when it comes time to publish, love and pride keep you from removing it. Humans, real humans, are a strange lot.

It's still before sunrise at Litvak's Arcade, though it's a beautiful morning over Smolensk North. I get out of my grey flight suit and into an olive-drab wool uniform with brightly-colored blue insignia on the lapels and a matching visor cap. The mere fact I have this uniform, when I have no in-game reason to wear it, is probably why I do.

"_Qayırlı tañ,_" says Major Novikov in a different language, who wears the same uniform, albeit with a leather belt, riding boots and crimson red instead of sky blue. He's usually the first man I see each morning, though by his own confession he hates mornings, particularly Monday mornings. As with most video games, race is a binary factor, maybe to save memory. G.I.s are either black or white. In _Smolensk Strike_, the Red Army is either Slav, like me, or Asian, like Novikov. And he's handsome at that, popular with the ladies despite his cool indifference at the Illusion Bar, and something of a brainiac.

"_Dobroye utro_," I tell him back. In a sense of cosmic balance, Novikov is smart and good-looking to make up for the fact that he was not created knowing how to fly. He commands the near-regiment of ground troops, tanks and other fighting vehicles, who serve as fodder for the player during the missions. He has it worse than me: the scant few air defense vehicles he controls aren't much help against the player. He outnumbers the White Army troops four-to-one, and he could outfight them if he had a tenth the men he does. But none of that matters once they establish air superiority…

Novikov doesn't get up from the conference room where he has breakfast each morning, in front of a large portrait of a bald revolutionary and a red flag. Nominally, I am one rank above him, but we've long since passed that formality in private. The two of us only keep up appearance when our arch-nemeses are watching, which is infrequent.

"How was the bar scene?" Novikov does not drink alcohol. At all. Even on holidays.

I know, right?

"Not bad. King told me to give you her regards. Oh, and Mary was there."

He perks up. Konstantin 'Too Cool for School' Novikov has a thing for beautiful, chesty women with tough arms and award-winning smiles, what a shock. "Really, how is she?

"Fine. She promised to stop by to give your boys more time, you ought to call her on that."

In truth, Novikov knows Blue Mary better than me. The whole reason Mary comes here is not to fly, but to ply her own skill set: she fights with a form of Sambo, _our_ own military martial arts. Novikov's version of martial arts involves sneaking up on someone and breaking a chair over their head before shooting them in the face with his sidearm, but he has an excellent eye for talent. The First Guards 'Sevastopolsky' Regiment, the fancy name for the undersized unit he commands, know talent too, or maybe they're just happy to watch a beautiful woman demonstrate talent on their backs and arms. The army boys, unlike my own, are less familiar to me.

"I'll do that," he said in agreement, before leaving with coffee cup.

"Novikov, is there someone in for flying lessons?" I called after him.

Novikov paused and stifled a laugh. "I think he's looking at the airlifters, Comrade Colonel."

He's referring to the line of Il-76 strategic airlifters. The Aerodrome is divided into a few different parts: the aviation plant on the southeast side, the main runway and taxi routes north of that, the barracks and living quarters to the far south of that, and then the major and minor aircraft hangars. We have no less than _eight _fifty-thousand-kilogram airlifters, all packed together, between the aviation plant and the runway, for no reason besides tempting ground targets for any player willing to brave our heaviest air defenses.

They all work just fine, but what are we going to do with them? Load up all of Novikov's tanks, fly around in circles, and land? What do we have to airlift?

I took a leisurely stroll in my polished loafers to the northeast, heading in the direction of those eight white steel beasts with blue stripes. The weather is almost always good in Smolensk, except for that level with the nighttime raid set during a downpour. Even the winter level is fairly pleasant.

It's a pretty usual 'morning', with details of ten men in two lines marching rather mindlessly along the grounds in their blue-trimmed _pilotka. _A pair of Fulcrum pilots, in full gear, saluted me as I passed: somewhat mindlessly, I just gave them a semi-friendly wave.

Miles Prower was immediately identifiable, staring up the underside of one of the four big turbofan engines of the furthest airlifter. I belatedly remembered that I had no idea who Prower was, or what he looked like for that matter. I would have recognized someone from _The_ _King of Fighters_, but Prower wasn't a name that meant anything. So I was treated to the sight of a small, furry orange-and-white animal standing on his hind ledges. A comparison with the turbofan meant he was less than a meter tall, though he was taller and larger than Bob-omb. He wore polished red shoes of some kind and white gloves over his hands.

Holding my face in my hands, I kept walking towards him nonetheless. Damn it, Mai, another one of your practical jokes?

"This is a real PS-90, from Aviadvigatel! I can't believe you guys have one of the new engines!" a childlike voice declared, full of wonder and optimism.

I removed my hand. The little creature was standing in front of me. For a minute, I didn't say anything, as he beamed at me. "Yes, it's a PS-90A-76," I explained. "It's kind of anachronistic, but what the hell, we're in a video game anyway."

I looked down at him. "And you are?"

"Miles Prower, sir! But everyone calls me 'Tails'. It's very nice to meet you, Mister…?" he asked, standing on his toes—apparently, he had toes—and extended a gloved hand to me.

"Air Commander. I'm the Red Air Force Commander," I said, a little too quickly.

"Okay…uh, sir. Ms. Shiranui said you were the best pilot in the arcade, and that you not just teach me about flying jet aircraft, but also give me actual flight hours."

I nodded, kneeling down to shake his hand. "What…what exactly are you?'

"I'm a fox, sir," he said. Behind him, a pair of large, fluffy tails bobbed about.

A two-tailed fox. I caught myself about to say something about it. "Well, I doubt you came here for lessons on cargo aircraft, even if these Illyushins are the best in the world."

"The name 'Candid' really is appropriate, sir!" he piped in.

"What exactly is it that you fly?" I asked, looking around. "You didn't fly it here, did you?"

"No, sir! The _Tornado _probably couldn't get pass customs," he said with a laugh, referring to the surge protector.

"Of course, and it's a biplane?" I ask him, removing my visor cap and crossing my arms.

"Yes sir! How did you know, sir?"

"The Queen of Fighters mentioned it."

"Oh." 'Tails' paused for a moment, as if considering something. "She's a very beautiful lady, isn't she, sir?" he said eventually.

I look down at him as the short little fox beams back up at me. He's barely half my height, like an oversized plush doll. "Okay kid, I'll show you around."

I walk with Tails across the hangar, whom I'm impressed has no trouble keeping up despite his short little legs. The first aircraft of the morning—our Fulcrums—our being towed out by vehicles belonging to the ground crew.

"Wow, MiG-29!" Tails shouted.

Nervous cough. "Yeah, those are our smallest fighters on base, not counting our trainers. We also carry Foxbats and Foxhounds."

Tails giggled. "Heehee. Foxbats."

I looked at him.

"Oh, it's Rouge…uh, never mind sir."

Appearances aside, Smolensk North is not that different from any other video game local. People thrive on repetition and predictability. So when a little orange fox trotting around in big red shoes strolls around base, news gets around quickly. Even now, ground crew and troops whom were supposed to be preparing for patrols were driving by not-so-discreetly, arching their heads to get a better view. They're easy enough to ignore as we reach the large hangar.

"And here's our _pièce de résistance_." He followed me through a small hangar door into the largest hangar. Inside is the largest aircraft in the game, probably the largest aircraft in the arcade. Our White Swan. The loyal opposition calls its 'Blackjack'."

Tails' eyes grow as large as saucers and he actually falls on his back staring at it. All around him is a single huge, swept-wing supersonic bomber painted in blinding white, unmarked except for a red star on each wing and on the tail stabilizer.

"Which is kind of a stupid name," I drone on. "Considering it is neither 'black' nor a 'jack'."

Tails is literally speechless. The White Swan is 54 meters long and weighs almost 270 tonnes—it's literally twice as large and twice as massive to him, thanks to his size.

"This is the official boss of level eight. If the player reaches the White Swan, I get to engage them. It becomes a bonus objective after that, most players spend so much time shooting me down that the White Swan escapes." A deep sigh while I pace around huge forward landing gear. "To get a high score, the player has to shoot down the White Swan before it fires its missiles."

Tails finally gets up. "And that's how you beat _Smolensk Strike_. Feel free to take a look, it's our most popular piece." I feel around my uniform and reach into my waist pocket, taking out a photograph. "The Women Fighters Team got their photos taken on board."

I gave Tails a laminated photograph of four women from _The King of Fighters _sitting in the cockpit wearing headsets, turned to the back, grinning and giving the thumbs up: Mary Ryan, Shiranui Mai, Sakazaki Yuri and King.

"It's like being a cruise without the sea sickness, I heard." I told him before jogging out of the hangar. Leaving Tails behind turned out to be a good call, because my behavior that followed was somewhat less officer-like and gentlemanly.

Sitting in front of the hangar, between a pair of Albatros jet trainers, is something that does not belong: a circular vehicle with a large, segmented viewport braced between two large, dagger-shaped wings. It is light grey and black, with one of our own yellow ladders propped up against the side and surrounded by our own ground crew.

"What's that ship doing here?" I asked, grabbing the arm of a nearby ground crewman.

"…I don't know, sir?" he replies very carefully.

"Could you please find out if there are any more of them in our game?" I ask him quietly before releasing him. He nods and runs in the direction of radar and tracking, while I run towards the offending ship.

"OKAY, OKAY," I scream angrily. "WHAT THE F- IS THE TIE FIGHTER DOING HERE!"

I am literally bleeped out by the game, a piercing tone. If I want to swear, I can't do it in English. This is an 'E' rated game, despite the fact the player blows up the sons, husbands and children of people they've never met with missiles.

The ground crew, looking very guilty, immediately distance themselves from the spacecraft's dagger-like wings, or whatever they are.

"It's…not a fighter, Comrade Colonel, it's an interceptor!"

"I don't care if it's the Goodyear Blimp from _Madden_, it's not supposed to be here!" I scream, not at anyone in particular. I'm trying to find the spacecraft's owner, who should be immediately recognizable in a solid black space suit and bulky helmet. "How did you even get it in here, past the surge protector?"

"Well, that's a funny story, sir…" He's cut off by another ground crewman elbowing him in the side. To be fair, it actually is a very funny story when it's finally related to me, made all the funnier and more impressive by my experience. Years ago I spent months trying to figure out how to smuggle a VF-11B from _Macross Plus _into _Smolensk Strike _and came to the conclusion that the only way to do so was to turn it into a quarter million smaller parts a single person could carry.

Why? Well, aside from the reactive armor and the laser gun, there was a matter of power. My Flanker has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.08. When unarmed, the VF-11B has a ratio of 6.33. With a nuclear-powered Valkyrie in my corner, I could have shoot down every single quarter-jockey who came my way. It was only after I considered the implications of doing _just that _did I give up on the idea.

"Whatever it is, I want it out of here, _now_!" In the process, I'd actually shouted myself tired. Am I really that feeble, or was I really just that angry?

"Yes sir!"

"Uh, sir?" a little voice asked behind.

"WHAT? I mean, what it is?" I asked Tails.

"Well, since the jet trainers are out and all, sir, I thought I should pay your fee."

As you probably know, inter-arcade commerce at Litvak's is based mostly on bartering. The complex process of understanding the local demand and negotiating from here. The youngster fox, wasn't really familiar with any of this.

He held a leather traveling bag up at him. I didn't recall having seen him carrying it earlier, and I opened it to find four large, lustrous metallic hoops, about as wide as a dinner plate. I held one up in the sunlight—it had a yellow-brown shine to it.

"Golden rings, sir."

"These are hoops," I corrected him. "You're paying me in golden hoops?"

Tails blinked. "They're pure gold, sir!"

"What the…what am I supposed to do with four golden hoops?"

Tails looked nervous and he reached behind his back. He fidgeted for a few minutes, as though looking for something in some invisible pocket. "Uh…and this, sir!"

He held a toothbrush at me. Specifically, a red toothbrush in a plastic container. I took it from him and frowned. The airfield had become impressively quiet.

"It's…a really good toothbrush, sir!"

"You are incredibly lucky that I do, in fact, need a new toothbrush," I explained while staring at him. "Lieutenant, prepare trainer number two for operation."

"Yes sir!" someone yelled behind me. Tails gave a deep sigh in relief and in minutes, we were both sitting in the tandem cockpit of one of the two Albatros jet trainers. A ground crewman is about to walk Tails through the startup process when I stop him.

"Just hit the button. This thing practically starts itself, thanks to Sapphire," I shouted at him from the instructor's seat.

Tails hits one button and, sure enough, it takes about 20 seconds for the turbine to reach idle and the auxiliary power unit, Sapphire, turns itself off.

"Wow!"

"Don't be too impressed, it's usually more complicated than this. We don't have an oxygen mask you can wear easily. So when we do get off, try and stay under 2500 meters, are we clear?"

"Yes sir!"

"Just follow my lead and don't deviate, understand? This isn't like flying a biplane!"

"Yes sir!"

"Oh, and one last thing: this trainer does have ejection seats. If for some reason this turns out to have been a horrible, horrible mistake, for godsakes, hit the silk! You get killed in this game, you get killed for real, understand?"

"I understand that, sir. And thank you again for letting me do this," Tails shouted back.

"Yes, well, if we turn into a crater, it's not my a- that's grass," I said. All Tails hears of my mumbling is the loud _bleep _in the middle of it.

"Excuse me sir?"

"Check your throttle is idle, than release your brake! Thirty percent throttle is all you'll need to taxi, make liberal use of your brake. Now, on the runway, you'll want to start pulling back at one-eighty, and you'll take off at about two-hundred."

"I know how to taxi, sir, but do you mind if we have some music, sir? For my first time in a jet and all."

"Music?" What music? An L-39 Albatros doesn't come with a tape deck.

Tails, who's sitting on top of his parachute so we can see over the console, waves his right hand at the ground crew while giving a thumbs-up—by some miracle, he actually has five fingers to my surprise—and a ground crewman nods, returns the gesture and begins talking into his headset. He then checks the rudder pedals, which he can only reach standing on top of empty tennis cans.

"This is the radio console, right sir?"

"Yes, but…what are you doing?"

Tails fiddles with the knobs for a few seconds and turns up the volume loud enough that I can head talking in my headset from the ground crew. He releases the break, begins taxiing forward, right, and then forward again onto the long runway.

"Are you ready?"

"Just one moment, sir!"

"Damn it, Tails, what is it…argh!" Grainy music begins blaring loudly over my headphones and almost jump out of my seat.

"Weehee!" Amid the music, Tails and I hear the Tower give us permission to take off. I'm about to yell at the Tower to find whoever's playing the music and shut them down immediately when I realize I recognize the music.

"_Revvin' up your engine  
Listen to her howlin' roar.  
Metal under tension  
Beginn' you to tough and go._"

"God, not bloody _Danger Zone_!" That's the last thing I yell before Tails pushes the throttle to full and I'm knocked back in my seat.

* * *

_**Author's Notes:**_

Highway to the Danger Zone is_ sung by Kenny Loggins, lyrics by Tom Whitlock. Yuri Sakazaki is a character owned by the SNK-Playmore Corporation. The TIE Interceptor is from the _Rogue Squadron_ game, among others, published by LucasArts, part of Lucasfilm Limited and the Walt Disney Company. The 'Blackjack' (NATO reporting name of the Tupolev Tu-160 supersonic strategic bomber) is property of the Kazan Aircraft Production Association. The 'Foxbat' (NATO reporting name for the MiG-25) and the 'Foxhound' (NATO reporting name for the MiG-31) are both property of the Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG. The L-39 Albatros is a product of Aero Vodochody, a Czech aircraft company. And finally, the VF-11B of _Macross Plus_ property of Triangle Staff, and the 1996 _Macross Plus_ arcade game was published by Banpresto._

_Additionally, the historic event that the narrator is referring to is the 1993 Constitutional Crisis, which ended with Russian tanks under the command of President Yeltsin firing on the Russian Supreme Soviet building (the national legislature), which over time has become widely unpopular act in the country over time. _


	4. Smolensk North, Pt II

**Smolensk North, Part II**

What, would you say, is the most dangerous game in Litvak's Arcade?

It's a multi-faceted question, if anything, but the general consensus is that it is, in fact, _Hero's Duty_, the high-octane science fiction rail shooter that pits an elite marine unit (the funny English word for "naval infantry", not the adjective for aquatic life) against the "Cy-bugs", a very dangerous form of semi-intelligent alien life.

I have never visited _Hero's Duty_, but I'm inclined to believe Novikov, who did so on one occasion. But that's a story for another time.

There is a difference, however, between the most dangerous _game_, and the most dangerous _side_. In this regard, it is the Red Air Force of _Smolensk Strike _that is the most dangerous, in the sense of capable of the most destruction.

Why? Dr. Igor Kurchatov.

To elaborate, we have something _Hero's Duty_'s fighting men (and woman) don't: atomic weapons. In fact, we have many of them, in the form of Kh-15 and Kh-55 atomic missiles. Putting aside the larger Kh-55 briefly, the Kh-15 is a supersonic (as in "five times faster than the speed of sound") cruise missile that carries a 200 kiloton nuclear warhead. A kiloton, in civilian parlance, is a measure of explosive energy equal roughly equal to one thousand English tons of TNT. The White Swan can, and does, carry twelve of these "short-range strategic weapons" at a time.

The point to take from this is that Smolensk North Military Aerodrome, and by extension, _Smolensk Strike_ the arcade game, are nuclear powers.

There are many, many such missiles sitting in the Storehouse, an underground bunker beneath the Aerodrome, and naturally, we get a steady supply of more from the Aircraft Plant to replace the ones we lose, just as we get a replacement Tu-160 bomber to replace the one that is lost. I've calculated, very roughly, that we have more than four times the missiles necessary to wheel at least one on a loading cradle into every single game in Litvak's Arcade, allowing for multiple missiles for the geographically larger games like _Rogue Squadron _and some of the fantasy games, and destroy everything everywhere. And we also have the technical know-how to set them off; we could even fashion equipment in such a manner than any attempt to disarm or move the weapons triggered their warheads.

That, I suppose, would be considered "Going Turbo."

I did this arithmetic on the back of a napkin in the cafeteria many months before _Hero's Duty _first appeared and Novikov's investigation, and the thought lingered in my mind every time Mai or anyone else extorted some small favor from me that involved any sort of major equipment, including that particular occasion. No other game in the arcade, not even other aircraft games like _Area 88 _or _Macross Plus_, has used splitting the atom as a weapon of war, and here we are in _Smolensk Strike_, sitting on enough nuclear arms kill everything, everywhere as far as the arcade is concerned.

We never spoke if it again, of course, but I kept it in the back of my mind. It surfaces every time I personally visit the Storehouse or I read the last page of an inventory report. I don't even remember what led me to consider the mathematics behind that, I hate maths. _  
_

I was thinking of that while in the back of an Albatros jet trainer with Tails, not far off the ground—no more than five-hundred meters, I judge by eye, ignoring the altimeter in front of me.

"Go ahead and climb. Shallow, no more than ten degrees. You won't need to increase power."

"Yes sir."

"It's a lot different than a biplane, huh kid?"

I see Tails' eyes underneath his too-big helmet in the rearview mirror on the canopy. "Actually, not that much sir. A lot more gauges though."

"I…sort of took for granted you at least read a book on jet propulsion before you got here," I admitted, a little ashamed. I'd let a minor take the joystick of a fully-fueled Albatros—when I put it like that, I sound really stupid.

"Oh, don't worry about that, sir. I did a lot of reading before I even thought of asking Ms. Shiranui."

I cocked my head. "Speaking of which, how is it that you know her? Through Sonic?" Sonic the Hedgehog, of course, I know.

Tails tone changed abruptly. It wasn't hostile, but it certainly wasn't the same bubbly friendliness from before. "How do you, sir?"

Suddenly I felt uncomfortable. "From the Illusion Bar originally. Then they started coming to Smolensk North on occasion. When you've got three-thousand mostly inactive men loafing about and the only women are the handful of medics they're superstitiously fearful of, you'll find they're pretty much amenable to anything."

"Really, so that city is empty?" I noted that Tails old voice returned as he pointed to the south.

"That's Smolensk," I explain, not looking. "And yes, it's empty. Just a perfectly-maintained Eastern European ghost town."

"There's nothing there?"

"I didn't say there was nothing there, kid. There's plenty of stuff there. Movie theaters, a wedding palace, Smolensk State University and Smolensk State Medical Academy. It's a whole city. There are just no _people _there."

"Why not, sir?" His curiosity was getting the better of him, and I told him so with a very direct look. It's a sore point for me because I have no doubt that, if the 300,000 or so residents of Smolensk, or even a fraction of that, were in this game, things would be very different.

"Increase the throttle power to ninety percent and climb to 2000."

"Yes sir!"

For all the cold shoulder I'm giving him, I can tell that the kid's a skilled pilot. I can also tell that not all of that transfers to flying a jet trainer, but enough does. I directed him due west and kept my eyes peeled.

"Tree cover is starting thin, bring her down to 1200."

"Why sir?"

"You'll see. Keep an eye on the scenery, and another your horizon."

When we were over 400 kilometers through the border of Belarus, he saw it. "Sir, is that…is that another airfield?"

There's a rather crude dirt airstrip visible in the drained swamps of Lake Selyava. It's not long before he pass directly over it, and I gesture at Tails to turn us for another flyover. By the second time, something is definitely up: small human figures emerged from camouflaged tents, and the shape of aircraft underneath tarps can be seen.

"What are they bothering to hide for?" I mused, smirking.

"Sir, that's an airstrip!"

"It should be the Selyava Wildlife Refuge of Soviet Byelorussia. But it's Airstrip One, the base of the loyal opposition. Check it out."

As I explain that, on the ground at Airstrip One, the largest of the tarps is being pulled of, revealing a shiny, white aircraft with forward swept wings, canted stabilizers and two massive jet turbines.

"W-What's that?"

"Don't recognize it?" I asked, grinning at the back of his head.

"I've never seen any aircraft like that before! Where's the canopy?"

"It doesn't have one. That's the unmanned White Air Force air superiority fighter, the _Falken_."

It wasn't visible from our height, but the abnormally large aircraft—it's wingspan was almost twice as long as the adjacent F-15E that had its cover likewise removed—instead had a honeycomb of twelve small, octagonal camera ports where the canopy would otherwise be. Near those were canard wings, not unlike that on the Flanker.

"I…I don't…"

"It's the player fighter, boy. It's easily the most powerful fighter in the game, not to mention has thrust vectoring, unlike ours. The thing has almost as much thrust output as a Tu-22M, and can almost outrun one of our Foxbats."

"What a monster."

"Yeah, what a monster," I muttered.

"They're…they're not going…"

"No, no. They don't launch until someone drops a quarter in," I explained. "If anything, we probably just reminded them they're on the job. Wakeup time, guys! _Wakey-wakey, eggs and beacey!_" I shouted in their general direction uselessly.

"Plus, they've got no real air defenses to speak of," I tell Tails as we turn east for home.

Tails has no trouble landing the Albatros, leaving a few skid marks on the runway but otherwise setting it down perfectly, and he begged me for the chance to check out the White Swan. Everyone loves the White Swan, to the uninitiated, it's such a cool aircraft they can hardly believe it exists, much less that actually exists outside the game. I assign another pilot, a captain, to watch him while I undo my uniform tunic and loosen the elastic on my necktie. I'm definitely tired, to my surprise. Time was I could stay up all night, spend a morning perfecting Pugachev's Cobra in the Flanker, then land and enjoy a nutritious breakfast of black coffee and cigarettes smuggled in from the only place in Litvak's Arcade you can find then, South Town. Now I don't smoke anymore, and I rarely take coffee outside of breakfast.

Instead, like the weeny I've become, I find myself sitting in the Aerodrome's reading room, where we rotate the more interesting books from the library at Smolensk State University on a schedule. It's Novikov's idea—our very own fighting scholar thinks it's the only thing keeping our brains from rotting when we're not on duty, though he put it in different words.

The telephone on the wall rings, surprising me. "Air Commander here, go ahead."

The voice is a little distorted, but clear. "_Sir, this is Communications. We have a call from the Front Desk, a Mr. Robert Omb._"

I snort and chortle. What was originally a discreet security precaution has become a long-running gag, as happens in _Smolensk Strike. _Real-time intra-game communication—like through telephones carrying audio—doesn't exist, obviously. The most common way to deliver a message is by physical courier. In _Smolensk Strike_, our discipline, resourcefulness, and abundance of spare time has come up with a moderately better solution: the Signals Troops Company, under the command of Novikov, has a small detail of men posted at the railway tunnel in Smolensk City that lead out of the game. They're glorified telephone operators, with a wired army telephone set that reaches out to a man physically waiting on the other end of the tunnel, who is rotated in and out. That way, someone who wants to communicate with someone in our game doesn't need to enter it—they merely need reach the power junction, get the attention of the soldier waiting at the desk, and speak into a handset. It's not that impressive technologically, but it beats the hell out of anything any other game has, including _Hero's Duty_ with their mastery of anti-gravity.

"Send him through." To this day, Bob always identifies himself as Robert Omb to the Signals troop at the "front desk", a way to distinguish himself from the otherwise physically identity other walking metal bombs.

"_Patching you now, sir._"

I hold back the laughter until I hold the tone. "Hey, Bobby, how was your date with _Juuuuli_? Was she _hooot_?" I coo at him annoyingly, pulling the handset on its cord over to the clipboard that's covered in photographs and sketches of all kinds. With a little searching I find Juli from the _Street Fighter _series, in her purple-blue outfit and with an expression devoid of any emotion or life.

Metallic laughter from the other end, and then an explanation.

"Cold huh? Well, with all that sweater meat, I guess her personality doesn't really matter, now does it?" I tell him vulgarly, pulling the thumbtack out and looking at the photo. "You need to be careful around those German girls, they're…"

He interrupts me.

"No, nothing here. Gave an eight-year-old fox some flying lessons, but that's about it. _Snoozeville_ as the Yanks say."

More metallic chattering.

"Really. Mario, eh? I didn't know you guys…hung out."

An explanation.

"No, I don't mean _hang out_ hang out, you know what I mean. But sure, I'll meet him. I mean, I don't know what to tell you, it's never occurred to me. The actual Mario might be a working-class _Stakhanovite _hero of the proletariat, but you know, here, he's a cartoon bricklayer who jumps on tortoise shells."

A correction from Bob-omb.

"I stand corrected," I concede. "I'm just saying, he's no Tifa Lockhart. Hell, he's no Cloud Strife either. But I'll be there."

Some more pleasantries.

"Uh huh, you too, Bob."

I hang up and once again, I'm standing in silence, so I walk back to the armchair I was sitting in, put my reading glasses back on, and grab the hardback I'd been holding earlier. No sooner than I do that, there's a polite knock on the door.

"Come in," I say, feigning an intellectual air, as I have a good idea who it is.

Tails plops in on skinny orange legs and gives a salute that I have to imagine one of the officers taught him, seeing how it's our style, and not a western salute. "Sir, Miles Prower reporting in!"

I give him an unsympathetic eye. "Actually, you only salute if you're wearing a cap, but don't worry about it. Was your experience educational?" I ask, returning to my book.

"Very much so, _Comrade Colonel_."

I hold back a chuckle. "I'm glad to hear it. Not all the officers and ground crew have accents as weak as mine. Some are less than fluent in English."

I say nothing after that, leaving Tails to waddle around the library softly with those giant feet of his. Eventually, he stops behind my chair.

"Who are you reading?"

"Andrey Sinyavsky," I told him. Tails looked at me with clearly no idea who I was talking about. "A famous dissident writer. Of course, no one in a game can _really_ appreciates what he was a dissident about, but he does have a way with words."

"I see."

"In my culture…well, the culture that I'm programmed from, anyway…our dissident writers have been our greatest national heroes for centuries, in part because they _were _dissidents. They say what needs to be said, apparently." I close the book. "Feel free to laugh, everyone does. Maybe we should place consistency over intellect and just treat them like the dissidents that they are."

To my surprise, Tails gave me a genuinely perceptive look—a real feat given his distinctly non-perceptive looking face. "I think that's very important, sir."

I feel a rare smile cracking over my face. "Here." I give him my copy of the book I'm reading, _Fantastic Stories_. "This one is actually in English. Considering he was rehabilitated in 1991, you'd think we'd have more contraband English copies of his work, but we don't."

Tails takes the book, either with genuine interest or at least being very good at faking it. Knowledge, really, is the single greatest commodity in inter-game commerce. It is spread not by paperbacks like that, but between characters, intangibly and unrestrained, like air filling a vacuum.

"We are programmed knowing certain things and, to be clear, can live forever only knowing those things. But unlike the real world, there are no constraints on the pursuit of knowledge, no church or government who declares what you should know and what you shouldn't. _Our_ God isn't just a watchmaker, he's an absentee hobbyist. The exchange of ideas is the single greatest power we have over our own destinies."

I hear what I'm saying and feel a little embarrassed. "So, you're gonna' put in a good word with Mai for me, right?"

"Sure, sir. Uh…are you…?"

"Oh, myself and Mai? No, no. Not even close. But the beautiful tend to associate with their own kind, and she has a lot of pull among the ladies," I tell him unapologetically, glad to change the subject. "In multiple games."

"I heard she's won the Miss Arcade contest once, sir."

"At least once." The Miss Arcade Contest is, as the name would suggest, an annual inter-game beauty pageant, judged by a committee that I have sat on in the past by virtue of being the presiding character from my own game. I am actually a very poor judge, ignoring most of the criteria and voting however the heck I want to, but even without me, the young women from the numerous, cheesecake-heavy fighting games tend to clean up: particularly _The King of Fighters _(unsurprisingly), _SoulCalibur _(obviously)_, Dead or Alive _(duh), and _Virtua Fighter_—I suspect _Tekken _would do better if it wasn't for the fact that, first, Namco already has a cheesecake-heavy 3D fighting game in the running, and second, all of its heroines didn't look like they covered in Saran wrap and experiencing some intestinal distress. There are exceptions: Lara Croft won at least once in the past, as has Princess Peach. My cynicism aside, talent does factor into the judging process. At the risk of sounding insulting, that's how Cammy White won, I think.

"This is a very impressive library, sir," Tails tells me.

"You should see the one at the University, this is just a fraction of the books from there. Though I have no idea if you've got universities back there in…Sonic…Land. I confess, I don't properly know where you're actually from, besides the game series."

Tails is about to answer when the chime on the large clock on the wall with a red star in the middle of its face. The day's begun, Litvak's Arcade is officially opened. More grateful than usual for the inescapable march of time, I stick my hand out to Tails.

"I believe that's our cue," I tell him with all due military rigidity.

"Yes sir," he says, taking it. "Thank you very much for your time, sir."

"Perhaps we'll meet again," I offer him. Tails looks very happy at the thought.

A UAZ military jeep shuffles him into Smolensk City, where he'll take the commuter train out of our game and sign out with the Signals troop manning the Front Desk. In the meantime, I find my way back to the Ready Room, where the other officers have already congregated. At the front of the room, a radio set broadcasts a familiar, vaguely patriotic musical beat that blends into a rock song. Years ago, Novikov's Signals Troops Company tapped into the White Army frequencies, and have been able to adjust for changes and scrambling since then. The very first time, it gave us unparalleled insight into the enemy strategy. The second time, we realized their strategy almost never changed because this is an arcade game, and we mostly used it to eavesdrop.

"I miss anything?" I asked a nearby pilot, who saluted dutifully and shook his head.

"Just the quarter drop." In the first level, by design, we are much delayed in our warning, to give the player an easier time of bombing a nearby atomic power stations. I never cared for that, and it is thankfully solved by our skilled communications officers.

The player character briefing is starting to begin—a typical, movie-esque montage of grainy Cold War photography set to rock music, followed by deep-voiced, manly narration.

"_Frank Zappa and the mothers were at the best place around.  
But some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground._  
_Smoke on the water…  
Fire in the Sky.  
Smoke on the water…_"

And then the guitar rift, which one of the pilots present laughingly imitated, getting a few chuckles. Deep Purple, am I right?

I'm listening to the music too, since I've heard the briefing a hundred thousand times before, if not more. Still, I hear some of the deep narration come through. It's the usual patriotic but rather nonspecific spiel about the Cold War turning hot, about the showdown for the fate of democracy—how we're not the democratic ones, but they are seems ridiculous frankly, since we actually vote for things like the weekend lunch menu and they haven't voted for bupkis—and how the liberation of Europe from red tyranny is just the start. Who wrote this crap, Clint Eastwood?

"_…opening a corridor reaching across the planes of Germany, through Poland, into the heart of the Soviet Union. Operation 'Infinite Freedom' is nothing less than to finally neutralize the military threat posed by the Eastern Bloc_."

"Hey, who else is the Eastern Bloc besides us?" a pilot asks.

Another pilot ponders the question, before looking at the large map hanging on the Ready Room wall. "Mongolia, I think."

"Cool. I'm going to call Genghis Khan next time."

"_You represent the most elite aces from the best air combat units in the Free World. From our advance staging point outside the Russian city of Minsk, we now have the ability to strike directly at strategic enemy assets and troop positions…_" the manly narrator explained.

"_Belarusian _city of Minsk, you putzes," I mutter. "You aren't even _in _Russia."

"_Smoke on the water…  
Fire in the sky.  
Smoke on the water…_"

* * *

**_Author's Notes:_**

_Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov served as director of his country's atom bomb project, ending the American monopoly on the bomb. The Kh-15 and Kh-55 air-launched missiles are both developed by the Raduga ("Rainbow") Design Bureau, a Russian Aerospace Company. The McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle is an American aircraft now built by Boeing Defense, Space & Security. "Pugachev's Cobra" is a highly demanding aerial maneuver wherein an aircraft "flying at a moderate speed suddenly raises the nose momentarily to the vertical position and slightly beyond, before dropping it back to normal flight" all the while maintaining its airspeed, famously demonstrated by Cosmonaut and Sukhoi test pilot Igor Petrovich Volk in the new Su-27 aircraft. _

_Smolensk State University and Smolensk State Medical Academy are both institutions of higher learning in the city of, wait for it, Smolensk, Russia. The Selyava Wildlife Refuge is a biological preserve in eastern Belarus. "Smoke on the Water" is a song from the British rock band Deep Purple from their album, _Machine Head.

Hero's Duty, _of course, is from Disney's _Wreck-It Ralph. _Area 88, based on the anime film of the same name, is a 1989 arcade game manufactured by Capcom. The _Falken _is best known as the ADF-01 FALKEN from Bandai Namco's _Ace Combat _series, though those aircraft are manned and smaller. The _SoulCalibur _Series is published by Bandai Namco, along with the _Tekken _series. _Virtua Fighter _is published by the Sega Corporation and the _Dead or Alive _series is published by Tecmo Koei Games. Lara Croft is the protagonist of the famed _Tomb Raider _franchise, developed by Core Design and Crystal Dynamics, and published by Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd., while Mario and Princess Peach are both characters from the _Mario _franchise, published by Nintendo Co., Ltd. Cammy White is a character from _Super Street Fighter II_, developed and published in 1993 by Capcom Co., Ltd. Finally, Tifa Lockart and Cloud Strife are both characters from _Final Fantasy VII_, also owned by Square Enix. _


	5. The Strip

**The Strip**

What is it like to be shot down?

A question the ignorant might ask, but not an ignorant question. Or something.

There is no one answer to it, since there is no one way to be neutralized in air combat. Depending on the mission profile, the experience will be wildly different. Our Foxhound pilots, who enjoy the lowest mortality rate of any aviator in _Smolensk Strike_, engage in radio-guided interception at well above the speed of sound—any successful attempt to destroy them, while rare, is incredibly abrupt. Instantaneous, in fact.

By contrast, my role in the Flanker, and our Fulcrum pilots, all fly combat aircraft categorized as "supermanoeuverable" even though we lack the thrust-vectoring engines of the primary opposition. We also fly primarily in a defensive role over our own airspace. Dogfighting becomes a possibility in combat, and thus, to be shot down can take much longer, becoming a much less abrupt experience drawn out over a few seconds or even as much as a minute. Time does feel as though it's slowing down, seconds stretching out longer, when you're descending swiftly into a red out.

The player had reached level eight—by design, I found myself at fifteen thousand meters up, at the service ceiling of the White Swan. My own aircraft has a higher service ceiling, closer to twenty thousand meters, and the enemy Falken significantly higher than that.

The player isn't stupid. That makes this harder. They've climbed to at least twenty-five thousand and bearing down on us. Death from above. Our airborne radar aircraft, which the player has ignored, is squawking numbers at us, trying to keep me informed.

I turn. The Falken is massive, the size of a medium bomber rather than a fighter, glistening white. He has me targeted, but only briefly. I spin and climb, forcing him to do the same and bleed of speed. The Falken, contrary to the rules of aeronautical engineering and design, has a higher top speed than an F-15E, and by extension, my Flanker. But it is not nearly as maneuverable.

I'm able to put myself at his 6 o'clock, high. We're very close, at a distance where my short-range R-73 missiles would likely harm me if they scored a hit. Instead, I use guns: the 30 mm cannon in the starboard wingroot, the Gsh-301. One round would punch a hole in an F-15. I score multiple hits—flashing metal, smoke, burning shrapnel. In a split-second burst, almost a dozen hits all along the dorsal body. Some smoke trailing out. Otherwise, nothing.

The Falken is armored like a small tank, not an aircraft. Even that TIE Interceptor would have trouble here.

Then, a warning tone. An F-15E has me in its sights. The player deploys countermeasures, chaff and flare, further impeding my vision, before pulling a suicidal maneuver. Suicidal if the Falken were manned. All the player experiences is a rapid shifting of his screen. Even with my lighter aircraft, imitating that maneuver would be fatal. I let it turn and try to plan ahead, watching the Falken leave a long trail of smoke. The damage has not particularly impeded its maneuverability. Chaff and flare, a hard turn, and I'm behind the F-15E as it passes. An R-73 right into the left wing. Explosion, parachute, fireball. One of the non-player characters is cinders.

I know where this is going. The Falken is coming at me at almost twice my speed, having regained its own. I don't have many options in that fraction of a second, so I perform Pugachev's Cobra with the hope that he'll pass over me and I can even put some rounds in his underside.

That does not happen. He's going much faster than I calculated. Instead, he flies directly into me. We both explode. And after walking to a dim light at the end of a tunnel, I wake up in a hospital bed.

I am dead. The Falken is destroyed—even it cannot survive a midair collision with a 28 tonne aircraft full of fuel and missiles.

This is a familiar, but disappointing feeling. I look around.

"Are we in still in play?" I ask out of instinct. I actually feel fine, physically, but my head is swimming. Reincarnation is like that.

An unfamiliar voice sounds distorted in echo, even though the room is normal and small. "Easy there, Ivan, why don't you breathe a little?"

My disorientation aside, I don't plan to stay in bed a second longer, strange echoing voice or not. I was already changing into the spare uniform when the music starts—and it's not our music either. I know _Smolensk Strike'_s soundtrack by heart obviously. It's a very deep, fairly sleazy-sounding techno thump playing on a loop.

"What am I hearing, and who are you? Where's the medic?"

The sleazy techno thump is only getting louder, and in the mirror I'm using to dress I see a very pink blur in the corner of my eye and turn.

Standing there is a blond woman in an absurdly short, absurdly low-cut nurse uniform, colored hot-pink to the point of hurting the eyes. Despite the soft lighting of the recovery room, she has a distinct sheen upon her, as though she's covered in a layer of plastic wrap.

"What are you, some unlockable nut-job from _Tekken_?"

"I'm Scarlett, the new nurse," she purrs. I am immediately uncomfortable and just want to get out of this room. I never liked the hospital on a good day, no one in the game does. It may have more to do with the fact that the hospital rarely serves to address trauma and is simply our preset 'respawning' point.

"I don't believe that for a second. Where's the medic on duty?" I demand, hastily buttoning up my uniform. She gives me a smile that I think is intended to be seductive, but only creeps me out, so I shimmy past her in the doorway and further towards the exit.

"Come on, sir…"

"Hohoho…no. Are we still in play or what?" Rolling my eyes. "Of course you wouldn't know that, Scarlett, was it?"

Turning the doorknob, I find it's locked. I give an exasperated laugh and look back at her, trying to place her. She doesn't look remotely familiar. If this were an elaborate prank from the troops, I would probably be able to place her, being more familiar with other games than they are. This may not be an elaborate prank. Scarlett is holding a very stupid-looking pair of plastic pink glasses, with one of the ends between her lips.

"What are those?" I asked her finally, yanking harder at the door.

She touched their pink rims. "Oh, these?" she giggled, putting them on. "My X-Ray glasses."

"_Take them off immediately_," I growled. Somehow, she immediately obeyed. I'm not even sure where that hostility came from. I'm still shaking the door handle noisily. "Can you please unlock the door and stop that racket!"

"Sure," she purrs. "I just need a blood sample."

"Why would you possibly need a blood sample from me? Also, I'm not giving you one."

"_Hand it over, sir_."

Our little meeting ended with me climbing on top of a bed and out an open window, and finally away from that thumping video game techno music.

This was my first encounter with Scarlett, the so-called "nurse" who "volunteered" to meet our medical needs. The only part of that sentence that could be determined genuinely true is that we do have a shortage of medical staff—whether the woman's name is actually Scarlett, or she is a nurse, or what she came here to do remained highly suspicious.

She did, however, abide by my demand that she _not _wear those fetishistic glasses. To elaborate on that line of thought—I'm sure Ms. Scarlett has been held up as an example of the problematic _misogyny_ that goes into game character design. As I've established, much of my brain still retains otherwise useless academic and philosophical knowledge that I was given under the profile of 'officer', rather than 'warrior' or even 'guy who doesn't get shot down over and over'. My view on this is that this is incorrect. The definition of misogyny is "hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women." Scarlett, with her blond curls, packed bustier, and delicate features, is obviously not intended to attract hatred, dislike or even mistrust. Quite the opposite, her blatant sex appeal is intended to entice, disarm, and amuse.

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that she appears utterly unqualified to be a medical professional instead of a stripper. But her presence, specifically, doesn't fit the definition of misogyny.

Scarlett is a better example of blatant _chauvinism_, specifically denigration, disparagement, or patronization as presented by very obvious pandering.

I explained this to Bob-omb over drinks at the Illusion Bar, a location deliberately intended to put me in close proximity of beautiful women, unlike a military hospital.

"Red?"

"Yes, Bob?"

"Have you ever considered…maybe you over think things?"

I looked at him. "You're asking me if I _think _that I _think _too much?" was the only response I came up with. "Well, here's what I _think_: nothing good will come from the naughty nurse shtick."

And that was the end of that. Before I spoke to Bob, obviously, I complained to Novikov. Novikov, as C.O. of the ground troops, managed all hires and fires. There was no way anyone, much less a hot pink traffic sign like Scarlett, could get any sort of job at _Smolensk Strike _without his approval.

"Yes, I hired her. You know there's a shortage of medical staff?"

"This is what you call medical staff?" Talking to Novikov, like this, was like talking to a brick wall. Most of the army officers, and all the pilots, myself included, "grew up" in these high-class military boarding schools. That's what we remember anyway. Novikov, on the other hand, didn't just go to one—he _taught _at one back when he was a captain. There was no winning with him.

Novikov would never do something as blatant as hire someone to fill an empty position just because a pretty face or an impressive bust. Even I probably wouldn't have gotten away with it. There were rules in place for this sort of thing, most of them written by Novikov. It was like accusing that brick wall of unbecoming behavior.

"You know there are _no _free doctors in the Arcade? Anywhere," he explained calmly.

"What happened to Pavlova?"

"What do you think? She put her foot down: no more third shifts. Try and get shot down while she's on duty."

It's often overlooked that rules exist so that, if you fail to follow them, someone can nail you for it. There was no nailing Novikov, who knew the rules backwards and forwards, and knew exactly how to bend them without breaking a single one.

"I really don't care for her, _Kontantin Dmitryevich_," I told him. This is a Eurasian thing, one that's typically lost on others: the use of the patronymic as a sign of respect. Not only was it agreed long ago that Novikov would handle personnel management, but as a matter of _plot and design_, all army personnel answer to him first. The medics are _all_ army staff.

"Do you know any other doctors, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel?" Novikov asks slowly, knowing full well I don't. I just sigh. "Find another one, and I'll can Scarlett, I promise sir." That 'sir' is a polite acknowledgement that, in the end of the day, I outrank him. However, I'm only one step up the imaginary military ladder, and I can't simply override a necessity of medical personnel. An imaginary military stepladder more like it.

"To be honest, I thought you'd take a shine to her," he added politely, closing the open file on his desk.

"Why's that?"

"You know why."

"There's more to doctors than bright eyes and bountiful jugs, Novikov," I call out loudly before leaving his office. "Remember that next time!"

As I leave, without fail, Novikov had risen to his feet, donned his cap and saluted sharply while to the shout of "bountiful jugs!" and a hallway of troops staring curiously back at him. Nothing rattles him anymore; if anything, Major Prim-and-Proper enjoys it, even if you couldn't tell by looking at him.

For all the grief I give Novikov, and for the otherwise functioning working relationship the two of us have had for more than ten years, I am certain he would be _very _popular with the ladies if he wasn't such a cold fish. Being handsome can't overcome having the emotional warmth of an iceberg. Of course, Novikov is capable of emotion—anyone is capable of anything when they're being bombed from five thousand meters—and even normal, human emotion. I've seen him do it, in the Mushroom Kingdom or with the Nicelanders for example, but that's another story for another time.

This is also not the first time Bob-omb observed that my gloomy outlook on life might have less to do with my circumstances and more to do with my general attitude. It's always struck me as a useless loop, a chicken-and-egg type scenario, but it's a rare area I don't care to argue about.

I did not expect to have so much fuel for the fire for the next Bad-Anon meeting, as though I'd dragged myself into another commitment about _talking_ about my _feelings_ instead of two-handed coffee and playing footsy with Shermie (it's not a sign of affection—Shermie'll do that with anyone sitting next to her, leading Kari to avoid her more and more). Too much warmth is a bad thing too, after all.

"Anything you'd like to share?"

It's that day of the week again. I'm sitting between Shermie and Kari. Clyde looks at me, full of optimism and hope.

"No, nothing," I tell him with a shrug. He looked rather disappointed. Shermie snickered. She may have heard about the nurse incident, Shermie is the kind to know far more than she ever cares to let on.

"Are you sure?"

I answer with some loud coffee slurping. Annoyed, Kari stands up, fidgets with her red "dress" out of her backside with her thumbs not-so-discreetly, and begins speaking. I'm not really listening to her closely, and more thinking about how much she must hate that outfit she wears, constantly riding up on her. If I had to live with a wedgie every single day, I'd turn bad too.

After Bad-Anon, I actually feel a little bad about my behavior shortly after my respawn, and come to a conclusion: if Scarlett is still at the Aerodrome, I should apologize to her. If she's not, I should celebrate my good fortune, perhaps with a piece of cake from the commissary.

Like a persisting bad dream, Scarlett's standing in the corner of the commissary, legs crossed and arms together, leaning over what I realize is a gigantic, meter-long glass syringe. Little do I know that Scarlett _really _likes her giant syringe and is rarely seen without it, either leaning on it or within arm's reach.

She looks amused. "I knew you'd come find me," she purrs. You can tell she says that in her own game frequently.

"What the hell is your angle here, lady? You're freaking me out!" I keep shouting for the time it takes for me to approach the counter behind her, take a piece of cake, and leave. As commander, I have a right to cake. "How the heck is that thing not a giant comedy prop? Seriously, lady, stay the heck away from me! Or better yet, go back to your own game, you weirdo!"

I know some people find pseudo-medical professionals enticing. I didn't.

"Feel free to stop by any time, I'll be waiting…"

"Leave me alone!" I shout at her. After fleeing with the cake, I relate this encounter to Bob-omb, who after his bout of tinny, metallic laughter, pretends to sympathize.

"It's got to be tough, man."

"Yeah, yeah, why am I telling _you _about personal discomfort? Your whole existence is binary: either you're alive and well, or exploded."

"True that."

I finish with my paper plate and lick some cake from my fork. "Are you seeing Juli again?"

"Oh yeah! It's just it's hard to work around her schedule. Those _Street Fighter _girls, they really work them to the bone."

"Well, what do you expect? They don't have lives, not like you or me," I say, engaging in some baseless speculation.

"Hey, Ivan. Kiss the widest camo stripe on my lily-white butt." This remark is delivered from a familiar personality in a green leotard and red beret, with long, blonde hair that reaches down to her thighs.

"Present company excluded of course, Cammy," I fire back, though it doesn't stop her from giving me a friendly, swift punch in the shoulder that causes me to buckle and drop my plate. I'm still wincing when I hiss at Bob, "Not another word. I don't want to hear it."

I ignore Bob's conspicuous snickering and stare down the golden floor of the power junction. The surge protectors, in their blue-tinted uniforms and funny haircuts, are going wild.

"Hey, someone smuggling in something big?"

"No, can't be. Litvak must be putting in a new game," I mutter, still rubbing my arm. "Is it already that time of the year again?"

I manage to stand upright. "Cammy, have you heard anything about this?" The street fighter just shrugs her muscular shoulders and keeps watching. Sparks fly and there's a blinding flash: the game is plugged in. There's really not much more to describe; in the end of the day, a power junction is a pretty simple thing mechanically. Nursing my arm, I follow Cammy and Bob-omb over to the part of the floor still cordoned off with striped tape and surge protectors, running around with their pens and ties.

The sign comes on. "_Hero's Duty. _Ever hear of this?'

The only way Bob-omb can shake is 'head' is to rock back and forth on his feet. "Is this the one where you...there's like a civil war and…there's like an unnamed country with oil, and you have to…" Cammy begins, moving her large hands around in front of her, clearly having trouble articulating what she's heard described.

"No, that's _Call of Duty_, and it's a different game. At least I hope it is. God, I hope it's not _Call of Duty_," I tell her. I take a few steps forward before one of the protectors appears and stops me.

"Sorry, sir, I'm gonna' have to ask you to step back. We're still in the middle of calibrations and setup here."

"Oh, sure, sure, I understand completely…_oh my God, what's that over there!_" I screech and point. While the protector is chatting to me, Bob-omb has steadily waddled underneath the caution tape while Cammy as deftly flipped over it with a forward handstand. I barely hold back my laughter as the surge protectors flip out, panicking in every direction. With her usual grace, Cammy slides along the polished floor, snatches Bob-omb and takes off down the lobby, laughing all the way.

"_Hero's Duty_, huh?" I ask, the feeling returning to my arm. "Must be some kind of shooter. I look through the ground pin passage, the physical link between the terminal and the game itself. No activity whatsoever.

For a moment, I consider stepping over the caution tape. Curiosity almost got the better of me.

But I'm nothing if not a professional. And I've retained the experience of a few years, at least.

This was more Novikov's area of expertise anyway.

* * *

**_Author's Notes:_**

Scarlett is a secondary character from Kodokawa Shoten's 2013 _Killer is Dead_. The Surge Protector is a character from Disney's _Wreck-It Ralph. _The already covered _Hero's Duty _will be the setting of the next chapter.

The R-73 is a short-range air-to-air missile built the Georgian Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing company, while the Gsh-301 is built by the Izhevsk Machinebuilding Plant, now also known as the Kalashnikov Concern.


End file.
